Exactly.

 

Most will find agreement that PDK is the first glimpse of the future with thse street cars . Years of anticipation and development took it from its track origin into mass production . Its first year nearly wiped out decades of Tiptronic sales and even captured some manual market share. Despite resistance.

If the manual stays "as is" it will be just a matter of time before its phased out and that would hurt sales. Unless Porsche does something to provide balance there can be a flip side to this sophistocated component.

I said in my first reply that the sequential principle is already available and tuners are toying with it. We;ll see where the manual goes --but I woild be so disappointed if it just vanishes .It's already quite visible that a car with things like supple leather , a manual, beige interior, and classic wheels --is looking old school and all of thse items were once "really cool" .

I also said that the GtR didn't win . It did not lose because the car was a bad car . It lost because the customer service with repairs and insane warranty demands of the manufacturer turned people away. No one wanted to pay 85K to sit next to a Sentra in service having a service advisor saying his warranty was void and his transmission is toast .
Had Nissan been a bit more savy to the consumer needs -- things may have gone differently.

Porsche has to stay ahead .

 

Excellent point! I never thought of that. My first experience with a manual transmission on a motorcyle that I had when I was 12. In fact, that's how I learned to drive a manual on a car by taking what I had learned on the bikes and "translating" it to a car. Unfortunately, I had no one around that could teach me when I got my first manual car. Everyone in my family and my friends all had automatics. I had to learn on my own. Thank goodness for my motorcyles.

 

In answer to the original question, actual figures seem thin on the ground but even in countries traditionally more oriented to manual vs. auto shifting transmissions general consensus seems to be the PDK outsells the manual. I saw something on 911UK that mentioned 60% or some such number of 997.2's sold in the UK are PDK.

If anyone has any actual real world numbers, including comparisons with similar stats for tiptronic generation cars, that would be interesting.

 

Tiptronic has outsold manual in Germany for years.

 

You cannot compare the tiny tranny on a motorbike to the enormous tranny on a passenger car. Apples and oranges. For technical reasons (torque especially) I do not see a racing sequential on a passenger car ever. Double clutches are sequentials and the twin clutches can deal with the torque on the street.

 

Uhhhmmmm, I think I just did. My only point was that the idea of a sequential shifter is not a new paradigm -- which is what some posters seemed to be inferring. I wasn't suggesting that is was a good thing for Porsches.

 

I'd guess that Porsche will be slow to terminate the 6-speed transmission. They bank on tradition more than almost any other car company out there. I hope they would continue to evolve the manual shifting experience (the 370Z thing is a nice add-on) and I only wish that they would move (or add) a 3-pedal sequential shifter. But there might be a concern about retraining of customers or something that would limit sales. And no matter what they do, it won't have the performance of the PDK.
I'm still on the fence as to whether I will order a PDK on my next P-car. But I have no question that the PDK, by any reasonable performance metric is 'better'. And since my next Porsche is likely to be a GT3 RS, it's hard to imagine that I'd choose a transmission that is proven to be 'slower'.
Oh well. I guess I'll just have to keep my 997S Cab 6-speed a few more years...

 

Based on what numbers --the cayenne ?
Or what year ? A year where the Gt cars and Turbo weren't made?

Then there's the customer base of the Tiptronic who in many cases bought the car because they live in such a traffic congested area or so that other household drivers can use it. Many of thse buyers truly wanted a manual. There are even a few who shamefully won;t admit that they never learned to drive a manual .

PDK makes it where they no longer have to learn but most will agree that the Tiptronic plays second fiddle to the manual in the pre PDK years.

Then came the biggest Tiptronic hoax of all time --when Porsche created the 997 Turbo . All the auto journalists were ranting and raving how much faster the car got to 60 and all of a sudden Tiptronic Turbos began selling . It gave them just enough time to clear away the excess of Tip parts to make way for the PDK and what of those Turbo owners holding a Tiptronic -- depreciation went Timberrrrrrrrrr!!!

 

"Maurizio Reggiani, the director of research and development at Lamborghini, says in an interview with the magazine that they will likely follow Ferrari in ending their manual transmission."

http://domesticfuel.com/2010/03/30/l...85-compatible/

Wow! That's kinda sad to me.

 

smg is terrible for daily driving..

BMW's new DCT is lights out tho..

PDK also rocks !

it's just that i get bored after 5 min unless i am driving a manual..

 

I wasn't aware that Ferrari was no longer offering a traditional manual on their products any longer. It actually doesn't suprise me that Lambo would discontinue it because this company (surprisingly and unlike Ferrari) has no racing heritage. Don't get me wrong, I'm not L-car bashing, I very much respect their products with the their "extreme" designs and super high performance. I was just kind of suprised to learn that they don't participate in motorsports.

 

I like the old school roadster feel so I got a 6 spd in my Cabriolet. But I can see how in a total performance machine (coupe, turbo, ferrari) the PDK would be attractive.